The Amulet

by Michael McDowell

  Sarah and Becca spent several evenings filling out the forms as carefully as possible, for Becca, who was super­stitious in things small and great, had warned Sarah that a single mistake would negate the entire claim. If she misspelled a word, Dean would never get a penny out of the government for what had happened to him. Now the forms had been submitted, and Sarah awaited the govern­ment’s decision on how many dollars a week Dean’s injury had been worth. It was these thoughts that went around and around in Sarah’s mind, while she stared at Dean—and saw little more than he did, with the bandages over his eyes—when Jo, looking up suddenly from her sewing, said harshly, “How much do you think we’ll get?”

  Sarah shook herself slightly to dissipate the melancholy reveries, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t have any idea, Jo. I asked the doctor, but he didn’t tell me, he said it was best to say nothing at all, because you never knew what the government was going to say about these things—”

  “I sure hope it’s enough to buy a air conditioner for this room,” said Jo, impatiently trammeling the end of Sarah’s response, “I sure hope we can get a two-ton job in here, because it sure is hot, and Dean is suffering. Look how he’s just laying there, burning in hell on the top of the covers—”

  Dutifully, Sarah looked at the figure on the bed. “He’s not sweating,” she said, and wondered if it was really her husband beneath the bandages.

  “ ’Course you can’t see the sweat,” said Jo, “it’s under the bandages. Hot as hell under them bandages. The bandages soak that sweat up, and you can’t see it, but I know it’s there, and Dean is suffering, like you and I don’t suffer. We got to have at least two-tons in here, I’ve got the place marked in the Sears catalogue, so that Dean won’t suffer so—”

  “We also got to buy a lot of medicine with that money when it comes. I can get it at the PX over at Rucca, but it’s still expensive, Jo, and the doctor says that Dean has to have that medicine.”

  “A two-ton air conditioner would do Dean a world of good more than a whole handful of pills taken every hour on the hour. I know it would and you ought to know it too.”

  “Well,” said Sarah placidly, “we have to do what the doctor says do, or else I guess they’ll take Dean back to Rucca—”

  “Nope!” cried Jo. “They won’t take him back. I got him, and he’s not getting out of my sight again. He left me once, and he married you. He left me again and they blew his face off . . .”

  Sarah determined that she would not take offense. She smiled at her mother-in-law, though that was possibly the last thing in the world she felt like doing at that moment, and said, “You do a good job, Jo. I’m glad that you can be here during the day with him. We wouldn’t have him here at all if it weren’t for you. He’s taken care of, and he’s not so lonely.”

  Jo nodded with reluctant satisfaction. She didn’t like to agree with Sarah on any subject at all.

  “Larry Coppage said he was coming by after the plant was closed,” said Sarah. “He said he wanted to see Dean, see how he was.”

  “I know,” nodded Jo, with a malignant smile. “He called me up earlier from the plant. Dean and I have been getting ready for him.”

  “Do you talk to him?” said Sarah curiously. It was not idle questioning, she wanted to know. Dean never moved, Dean never showed recognition of anything in Sarah’s presence, and she found it impossible to address a remark directly to him. When she was alone with Dean, she was completely silent. When Jo was with them (which was most of the time) Sarah directed all her remarks to her mother-in-law.

  Jo evaded the question. “I know what Dean wants, and I know when he wants it.”

  “I don’t see how you can tell. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t say a word. They won’t even tell me if he’s got a voice or not.”

  “Don’t matter if he says anything or he don’t,” snapped Jo. “I know it. And you ought to know it—you’re his wife.”

  They had been through it more than once, and Sarah didn’t want to pursue the argument. She was bound to lose, and for all she knew, it was possible that such bickering might have an adverse effect on Dean’s recov­ery. She shrugged and said, “Wake him up. Larry’s on his way.”

  “He weren’t never asleep,” said Jo quietly, but with an unmistakable smirk of triumph.

  With a little shock, Sarah stared down at the figure of her husband still motionless on the bed. While she was trying to figure out which time her mother-in-law had lied to her, telling her that Dean was asleep, or that he had been awake all the time, the doorbell rang.

  Chapter 7

  Sarah pulled a robe quickly around her and went to the front door. She opened it to a man about thirty, with a good-natured but not handsome face. Though he was clumsily dressed, it was apparent that he had a great deal more money than the Howells. His current-model Buick Riviera was parked in front of the house.

  “Hey, Sarah,” said the man shyly, with lowered eyes.

  “Larry,” Sarah replied with a warm smile, generously trying to relieve the man of his obvious embarrassment.

  “I didn’t see you at the plant today,” he said hesitantly.

  “I don’t usually see you there,” replied Sarah, with a small laugh. Sarah after all was on the line, and Larry was an executive in the building farthest from hers. But she knew he was only trying to be friendly, and felt warm toward him for it.

  Larry Coppage was Dean Howell’s oldest friend, and had been best man at the wedding. He was a number of years older than Dean, but their common interest in quail hunting had drawn them together when Dean was no more than twelve or so, and Larry was graduating from high school. Jimmy Howell’s farm had the best quail in the county, and the farmer didn’t allow anybody but his son and Larry Coppage to go after them.

  Larry went to the University of Alabama, where he performed only indifferently, but this was of no consequence. He was a distant cousin of the Alabama repre­sentative to Congress, but since he was one of the very few of that multitudinous family to reside in Pine Cone, a job—and a good job—was assured him in the factory. He had only recently graduated from the university, only recently joined the personnel department of the Pine Cone Munitions Factory.

  It was just at the time that Dean was looking for a job in the factory in order to escape the draft that Larry had taken on the responsibilities of hiring the assembly line workers. He had wanted very much to find something for Dean, but he was unfamiliar with the rules, and did not yet know between which paragraphs they could be broken so as to allow entrance for a good friend who was in need.

  Larry was so ashamed of himself when he heard that Dean had been drafted that he found it difficult even to go up to his friend, to tell him how sorry he was that it had all turned out this way. He said nothing, but hoped he could overcome Dean’s increasing coldness toward him by offering Sarah the first job on the assembly line that had come available, even though she had not applied for it.

  “Is it okay if I see Dean now?” asked Larry Coppage at the door. “I mean . . .”

  Sarah nodded. It was an uncomfortable situation now, and likely to become more so. “In the bedroom. His mama says he’s awake.”

  Larry did not understand this remark, and looked at Sarah with a puzzled expression. She did not attempt to explain herself, but preceded Larry into the bedroom. She stepped quickly inside, and moved over into the corner by the closet door.

  When Larry Coppage first entered the dimly illumined bedroom, he saw only Josephine Howell. She had put her sewing aside, and sat with her hands folded in her lap.

  “Hey, Miz Howell. How you?” Larry asked in a low voice.

  Jo dropped her sewing into her lap, looked up with a small smile and said briefly, “Hey, Larry. Glad you came by to see Dean . . .”

  This surprised Sarah greatly, for Jo had many times told her that she blamed Larry Coppage for Dean’s being drafted, and she had said only the day before that it was because of Larry Coppage that Dean was smothering in his bandages.
/>   Then Larry glanced down at the bed beside him, and was shocked by the appearance of his friend there. He could not recognize Dean beneath the bandages; it could have been anyone. His stomach sank when the thought crossed his mind that Dean had just died, and that he was staring now at a corpse. But then he recalled that Sarah had said that Dean was awake, and so he asked, “He know I’m here?” He turned to Sarah for an answer.

  “I don’t know,” said Sarah grimly. “Ask her.” She in­clined her head toward her mother-in-law.

  Larry Coppage was growing ever more uncomfortable. He had known of course that Jo and Sarah Howell were not on the best of terms, but he had not imagined that there was this much hostility, or that they would let it show to such an extent in the room where the man that they held in common lay helpless and unmoving.

  Larry wished that he had not come to this house at all, but now that he was here, he felt he must go through with the visit. “Can he talk?” he asked Jo.

  She shook her head slowly, but said nothing.

  “Oh!” cried Larry in genuine despair. “I told you. I just wanted to see how Dean was doing, Miz Howell. Dean and I was good friends, you know that. They said he was bad cut up, Miz Howell, but they didn’t say noth­ing like this.” He glanced down again at the bed, which he had been avoiding with his eyes and whispered then, in dismay, “Can he hear me?”

  Larry’s question went unanswered.

  Jo Howell put forth another. “You still in charge of hiring at the plant?” Sarah detected a note of slyness in Jo’s voice, though she had evidently tried to make it sound merely conversational, but Coppage seemed not to notice. He nodded abstractedly, for he was absorbed now in trying to catch some movement in the figure on the bed. He could detect none. “Terr’ble thing,” he whis­pered. He turned then to Jo Howell (Sarah thought that he was about to cry), and in conciliatory deference, he said, “Oh, Miz Howell, I look at him, and I could think it was almost my fault. . .”

  Jo said nothing, but Sarah knew what the woman was thinking just then.

  Larry continued, in the fullness of his heart, “I just wish I could have done something for Dean so that he didn’t have to go off. But it wasn’t up to me, because there wasn’t no place for him in the plant, there wasn’t no position. He could have got that job at the end of the line when old Mr. Evers died if he hadn’t have got drafted just when he did. Sometimes we can keep ’em out of the army, Miz Howell, but we can’t get ’em out once they gone in. And I took on Sarah. I’d have done it, Miz Howell, you know that, I’d have given him a job, if there’d have been a job to give him. Dean was my friend.” He stopped in some embarrassment, when he realized that he was talking about Dean as if he were dead.

  Sarah continued to stand in the corner of the darkened room, expressionless and silent, with her arms folded. But she was earnestly praying that Jo would say nothing to Larry Coppage, that she would not try to make him feel worse than he already did.

  Jo looked away from Larry, and seemed about to speak, but at last she shook her head briefly, and said nothing at all. It was apparent that Larry’s excuses would not compensate for the loss of her son, and sharp words would not even help her for the moment.

  “Gotta go, Sarah,” said Larry weakly.

  Sarah moved away toward the door into the living room, intending to accompany Dean’s friend to the front door.

  “Larry Coppage, you come here,” said Jo perempto­rily.

  Surprised, Larry turned his face toward Jo, but did not advance.

  “I got something for your wife,” said Jo. Her voice was hard-edged but civil, and it was evident to Sarah that Jo was making a great effort to be pleasant to the man.

  Larry and Sarah were both puzzled, and wondered what on earth Jo would have for Rachel Coppage.

  “What you got, Miz Howell? A recipe or something?”

  Jo unclasped her hands and slowly held up a gold chain. It was delicate, of small linkage, entirely fabri­cated of gold, and if it had a clasp in its length, it was so small and delicate that Sarah could not readily locate it. From this chain was heavily depended a simple, flat cir­cular disc about three inches in diameter. Its center was a circle of blackest jet, two inches across, bordered with the same gold of which the chain was fashioned, and there was finally a slightly wider border of jet outside that. The attractive combination of black and gold con­centric circles constituted a stark, striking abstract design. Jo dangled the necklace before Larry and Sarah. Sarah glanced down at the figure of Dean briefly, because she thought she detected a heavier breathing than usual, but staring at his chest a moment, she could not be sure.

  When she looked up again, Jo was smiling and rocking her head slightly in the same rhythm as the swinging chain.

  “Where’d that come from?” Sarah asked involuntarily. She was sure that she had never seen it before.

  “It’s for Rachel,” said Jo quickly. That was not an an­swer to Sarah’s question.

  “I can’t take that for Rachel, Miz Howell,” said Larry. “Why you giving anything to Rachel, Miz Howell?”

  There was a slight pause before Jo answered. “Dean said he wanted her to have it.” Sarah was sure that Jo was lying, and yet since she could think of no other plausible explanation (not that this one was very likely), she had to accept it.

  Jo reached forward a little, and handed the necklace to Sarah. Scarcely glancing at it Sarah handed it over to Larry. There was something about the piece that she did not like, but imagined her distaste arose from its being Jo’s. Larry stared at it a moment with contracted brows, and then slipped it into his pocket.

  “Well, I know she’ll just love it,” said Larry to Jo, but without much conviction or enthusiasm. Jo did not reply, but smiled strangely.

  Larry and Sarah stood beside one another at Dean’s bedside, and stared down at the strange, motionless body, the head and neck wrapped tightly in yards of tape and bandages.

  Sarah saw Larry to the front door. He had stepped over the threshold and already said his good-byes, when he turned suddenly back to Sarah, and said glumly, “You don’t think it was really my fault, do you? You don’t blame me for that, do you, Sarah?”

  “No,” she replied, with her hand still on the knob of the door, “I don’t blame you, Larry. But Jo Howell blames you, and Jo Howell blames me. It wasn’t nobody’s fault, what happened to Dean. You didn’t hire him, and like Jo says, I had my hands on that gun when it went down the ’ssembly line, and she would blame the draft board that sent him away, and she would blame the man that sent him out to rifle practice, but Larry, you know and I know, it was just a accident.”

  “Well, you know,” said Larry, “we hadn’t sent any ri­fles down to Fort Rucca in six months, and that was ’fore you started working at the plant, so you didn’t have your hands on the one that . . . that hurt Dean so bad.”

  “Well, wouldn’t matter if I had, Larry. And it’s not gone change Jo’s mind, even if I was to tell her that.”

  “This is hard on you,” said Larry pitifully.

  “Yes,” she agreed quietly, “it’s hard on me.”

  “I hope it gets better.”

  “I’m sure it will, and I ’preciate your thinking about me, thinking about Dean and me.” But that comfort was more for Larry’s benefit, to make him feel a little easier, than it was conviction on Sarah’s part.

  Larry turned and went down the sidewalk toward his car, and Sarah went back into the house. She moved into the kitchen to start supper, though she was weary after a long day. But anything was better than returning to the bedroom and the sullen silent company of Jo and Dean. She wondered how much of the rest of her life was going to be this harsh, this comfortless. There had been times before Dean had gone away that she had thought herself trapped by her marriage to him, trapped into a long ex­istence without much reward for constant backbreaking work, in which even peace of mind was made impossible by the presence of Jo Howell. But now she was worse off, with an unresponding invalid on her hands�
�a husband who could not earn money, a husband who was no com­panion. It was possible of course he would recover, but it would be folly to imagine that he would be the same. There might be brain damage, there was surely great dis­figuration. In this part of the country it was easier to get a job if you were missing an arm, than if your face had been mangled. She could understand how people felt about that, and though Dean was a great deal of trouble to her now, she dreaded the day when the bandages came off.

  Chapter 8

  Larry Coppage had never been sure why he was Dean Howell’s friend—he wasn’t really certain he liked the man, or had ever liked him. Dean’s temper frightened him, and he didn’t like Dean’s laugh when he frequently talked about people getting hurt and dying in peculiar and painful ways, as if it were all a joke got up specially for his entertainment. Why had he never given Dean up, even though Rachel had objected to their companionship? Well, he told himself, for one thing, Dean didn’t have anybody else, and Larry would have felt terrible leaving him friendless. But also, he was reluctant to become one of Dean’s enemies, and Larry knew that was what would hap­pen if he ever showed any coolness toward him. Dean wasn’t so bad, if you kept him in check, and Larry had managed to do that when nobody else could. And even though Larry regretted that he had been unable to get Dean a job at the factory, he had found that he was not sorry that Dean had broken off their friendship because of it. It was as much a relief to him as to Rachel—she par­ticularly had not liked to see Dean around the children, though she never said why.

  Today was the first time Larry had seen Dean since long before he had left for Fort Rucca. Larry sighed heavily on the slow drive home: Dean Howell might just as well be dead. I never worked on a farm, he told him­self ruefully, but I think I know a vegetable when I see one.

  Larry Coppage’s house was a two-story frame structure about a mile away from the Howell home, in the very best two blocks north of Commercial Boulevard. Situated on a large corner lot, the building was neat but not imposing. It had been a wedding gift from his father, when he re­turned from the University of Alabama with his young bride.